2022 Report of the Cost of Government Commission

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REVENUE GENERATION IDEAS RECOMMENDATION: We propose that vehicles imported to Hawai` i be charged $6 per year of age at the time of importation. EVALUATION AND FINDINGS: The Cost of Government Commission created a Permitted Interaction Group (PIG) to look at opportunities for the County to generate revenue from its assets to improve the economic health of County government. This Revenue Generation PIG followed -up on a variety of proposals ranging from collecting fees from using community pools and parks, Zoo admission, and selling advertising on mass transit assets such as buses and bus shelters. To gain insights into what the County was doing and/or planning to do, it met with Parks & Recreation Director Maurice Messina and John Andoh, the Mass Transit Administrator. Through our due diligence, it appears that the County has plans in place to collect revenue from community park/pool facilities and the Zoo; plans also exist to sell advertising space on inventory Mass Transit holds. It appears these plans will come to fruition within the next year. One area that was not being met is covering all the expenses tied to abandoned vehicle disposal. Each abandoned vehicle (AV) that cannot be resold costs the county hundreds of dollars to dispose; most recently, this expense is approximately $600. The AV program collects $12 per year as part of existing registration fees. With the median life expectancy of a vehicle roughly 11 years, the average collection is less than $150 per vehicle. Because many older vehicles arrive in Hawaii and may have only a few years of useful life before they must be disposed, the County lacks sufficient revenue to offset any AV expense these imported cars may produce. We propose that vehicles imported to Hawai` i be charged $6 per year of age at the time of importation. This would help compensate for the high probability that an older vehicle is close to retirement age and could become an AV; even if it does not, such an additional fee will keep the AV fund solvent for a longer period. 25 2022 Cost of Govemment Commission —County of Hawai'i - Final Report